This KV-2 is one of my really old pieces. Build years ago, this is of course the Trumpeter kit. The kit is quite nice one, though compared to the other models of this era a bit simple, but it just reflects the complexity (or rather lack of it) of the original machine. Being few year old, you can of course find few small scratches it has suffered since…

I was of course attracted by the unmistakable look of the tank, reflecting the brute force of its design, which did not have any peer at the time it saw action. It’s no wonder German soldiers must have been in for a shock once they have encountered this beast, as Russkie were not expected to have anything like this. At the end, the tank was far from perfect – in some cases, it must have been abandoned once it slid on a slope, because the weight of the gun was so large that the turret could not have been traversed to its original position… On the other hand, there is very interesting story in the memoirs of General Erhard Raus, where he describes an encounter with a KV-1 in the early stages of the Operation Barbarossa – the tank was parked on a road between the front-line and echelon troops of his unit and it took them few days (!!!) to destroy it. At that time Wehrmacht simply did not have the firepower to deal with it.

I have built this model at a time, when my weathering skills were in its infancy, though I must admit the model looks quite good on these pictures. There were few areas which needed a touch of “metal” – of course the Friul tracks, which are the bes to depict the typical track sag of the russian vehicles. I have also used metal barrel and photoetch grills but cannot recall whether these were included in the kit or aftermarket. Overall, model went together nicely, I don’t recall any issues. To enhance the details a bit, I have added the handles on the stowage boxes on the fenders made of thin wire.

Weathering was done using chipping, which is clearly bit heavy-handed and pigments, applied heavily on the wheels and tracks. The paint job is bit dull, without a lot of colour variation, so I was actually thinking about removing the paint job and giving it another try. We’ll see. Vertical surfaces of the turret offer huge potential to apply all the modern weathering techniques, so if you want to give it a try, I can only recommend this kit.